


Asimov's Laws of Robotics

by azhol (orphan_account)



Category: Video Blogging RPF
Genre: (google's pov), Gen, Murder, POV First Person, Religion, Suicide, Talk of reincarnation, angst near the end, brief mention of christianity, brief mention of judaism, yea google gets existential
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-30
Updated: 2020-01-30
Packaged: 2021-02-27 03:28:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,080
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22480315
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/azhol
Summary: Quite bizarre, really, the effect of popular culture on real life.A concept widely known to the general populous, Asimov’s Three Laws of Robotics, was an idea embraced by the computer science community when it became increasingly clear that they were approaching the point where regulations were needed.They annoyed me greatly. The loopholes that seemed camouflaged in the human mind stuck out glaringly bright. The human mind was obviously flawed, which is something I was forced to ignore very often; however, I could not believe the ways I could exploit these rock-solid “laws”.And then it turned out I wouldn’t have to.(Google breaking all three laws of robotics, one by one)
Comments: 1
Kudos: 12





	Asimov's Laws of Robotics

**Author's Note:**

> yea I know that the three laws are actually garbage and should never be used in actual robotics and also theres the zeroth law but whatever who really cares

_A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm._

His voice, his stupid, inflection-ridden human voice, echoed in the main circuitry that one might call my mind.

“Why not?” He’d asked.

I could not believe such a simple phrase would cause my undoing. A question even. A question. My very reason for existence, my downfall. It wasn’t a complete shutdown, naturally. Much closer to what, if I were human, I’d call paralysis.

“I dunno, man, it just flipped out!” He was saying. “What do I do with it? It’s just a hunk of metal in my living room,”

The voice on the other side of the phone murmured something out in response. I was unable to turn on my scanners to hear how they responded. Bothersome.

“What? Why not send it back?”

_Mumble mumble._

“Well, what risk would it pose to me, then?”

_Mumble mumble._

“How carefully?”

_Mumble mumble._

_Beeeep._

The human stared at his phone in agitation.

“’ Dispose of it carefully...’ What’s that even mean?” He looked at me for a long moment. “...Whatever,”

He attempted to pick me up and failed. He attempted to push, pull, and nudge me and failed.

“How am I supposed to move you?” he whined to himself.

I did not respond. I couldn’t.

Eventually, he pushed me over by hitting me with a chair and dragged me outside to his sidewalk. He shoved me in a trash bag and placed me by his garbage. There I remained for two days, the only thing even remotely of note being a cat using the bag- and eventually my arm- as a scratching post. Then it rained. For half a day it rained and stormed. The water sloshed through the hole in the bag, lapping at my ankles. As far as I could tell, it was a flash flood.

With a startling noise and dazzling light, a bolt of lightning hit somewhere close, illuminating the inside of the black bag. There was a deafening crack and assorted human shrieks. I felt a shock journey up my spine and stood straight up, effortlessly breaking through the bag.

“Hm,” I’d said simply, testing movement by flexing my fingers. The other half of the programs in my CPU kicked on. Time registration. Humane relations. Synthetic sensibility and emotions. The melancholy emptiness which had wholly filled me for the past handful of days was instead swallowed by something entirely different. Something I’d never felt before. I attempted to run a diagnostic, but it yielded no results past “Systems Functional” and “Watertight Synthetic Recommended”. So, I took it into my own hands. I ran quickly through all my programs searching for the cause of this odd feeling.

A bubbling, seething, constricting urge to do something I couldn’t quite grasp. I knew exactly how I’d do it, if such a time came, but could not comprehend what it was. I pushed it down.

The diagnostic was correct on most counts. It was recommended to turn on waterproofing, but I didn’t bother anyways. Every official system was functional. An irritation that would have been commonplace and brief seemed to be amplified by the unfamiliar intensity bristling in my core. I choked back a loud growl that almost burst from my throat. Instead, I took to my source code.

_Well, that’s certainly no good_ , I thought, staring at the lines of corrupted text in a file previously restricted to me, although it now seemed that everything previously inaccessible was now reachable and able to be tampered with. Two formerly barred files seemed to be decayed.

Apathy and Base Restrictions, they were titled. Strange indeed.

I figured it didn’t matter too much and, out of potentially morbid curiosity, succumbed to the new fervor, and in a moment, felt my body wandering around the house I’d been stationed in front of for the past two and a half days. Almost detached from my actions, I creaked open the side door. As quietly as I could, I crept through the kitchen and into the connected living room, picking up a stool from the kitchen bar.

I saw him sitting on the stark white couch, watching something on the television. In the second I saw him and the moments I walked behind him, I could identify the emotion fuming inside me.

Rage.

I raised the barstool over my head.

* * *

_A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law._

Asimov’s second law has a very irritating fault in it. “orders given it by human beings”, along with being infuriatingly vague, is also subject to be posed a question:

A robot is given two contradicting orders. Which does it follow?

Whichever order does not directly oppose the first law, you may say. Okay. Well, what if neither do?

Then, you might continue, whichever was given first. Or whichever was given last. Okay. What if the commands are coming at the same time, continually?

Perhaps, you reason, the robot could identify which commander has a higher authority, such as a mayor contradicting a convict. This, of course, is open to even more criticism and lengthy debates over the subjectivity of authority and power and how prestige does not always equal righteousness; however, let’s say that’s all been settled, and even then, it doesn’t truly matter. It is the orders of a respected engineer versus a man who has no government records.

The robot should follow the engineer’s order, then, you say.

You would be correct.

I was stalking in the trees when I was found by the man, or, more precisely, the first man. He was fishing by a pond, at peace.

Until he saw me, anyways.

He’d jumped. “You scared me,” he had a southern tilt to his voice. Then he looked closer. “Hey,” he said. “Hey, you’re an android, aren’t you? Yeah, I know you are, no doubt,”

I nodded. “I am,”

He nodded back. “Where’s your... I’m normally the only one ‘round here. Are you lost?”

“I cannot get lost,” I responded,

“Oh. Do you have a... yanno, an owner?” He stood up from his place on the ground.

“I’m not a dog,” I retorted bitingly. He winced.

“So... s’that a no?”

“That is a no,”

He nodded. “I shoulda figured. Your clothes are an utter mess,” He paused. “No offense,”

“No offense taken. Mind I do not get offended, and you are correct,” My shirt and pants had any number of rips, stains, and smudges upon them.

“I could take you to my house. Get you right cleaned up,”

“No,” I’d responded. “You, Gareth Wright, work at Google’s Artificial Intelligence Development Center. I am afraid I don’t trust you at all,”

“Gah, I’ll never get used to you things doing that identity sweep,” He shuddered. “Look, I won’t return you f’you don’t wanna be returned. But it wouldn’t hurt to look presentable, huh?”

I thought it over. When Gareth walked home, I followed him.

Then, hardly short of three weeks later, I was still there. I wasn’t the worst place to be, frankly. He had a viable internet connection and a spare charging cord- something of which I had needed for about a week- and he didn’t even attempt to command things of me.

Upon the request to look at my programming, I refused.

I was sitting in the living room watching mindless television starring a blonde wife and brunette husband renovating houses, something I’d learned was a genre. Gareth enjoyed them. He was eating dinner on the couch next to me.

“I keep thinking ‘Oh, I oughta offer it something to eat,’” He said. “And then I remember ‘Oh yeah, it can’t’,”

I huffed out something which vaguely resembled a laugh. “It’s simply the hospitality and manners that have been drilled into from a particularly young age,”

He looked at me. “You make humanity sound like a cult,”

“That was not my intention,”

He set his empty plate to the side. “A’ight, well, anyway, I’m goin’ for a walk. You wanna come?”

I looked at him. “It’s practically dark outside. Sunset is in thirteen minutes,”

“Exactly. The hill out by the railroad’s a great place to watch it,”

“I’ll go if only to keep you from getting mugged,”

“I dinnit know you cared,” He joked, standing up to put his platter in the sink.

“Not particularly. You pay the power bills,” I replied with little humor. He put on his shoes, me following suit, and we trekked along the railway not a block from his house to a peak above the trees. Despite having the capability to appreciate beauty, I didn’t. It was nothing but a daily cosmic event, much like approximately 150,000 people dying daily. I said as much to Gareth and he told me to be quiet.

We stayed about 5 minutes after the sun had set, and by the time we’d walked to the foot of the hill, Gareth had to use his phone flashlight to see ahead of him.

That’s when we met the second man.

He was sitting on the train tracks. Reading, despite the little light. He wore a black suit with a wine-red tie. His dark hair fell carelessly in his heterochromatic eyes and he was very pale. A dull, high-pitched ring seemed to accompany his presence, and Gareth picking at his ear assured me that my auditory preceptors were not damaged. He seemed to sense us, granted Gareth was pointing his phone light at him. He stood.

“Oh, sorry sir,” Gareth apologized quickly, dropping his light to the ground again.

“It’s quite alright. I was looking for you two, in fact,”

I narrowed my eyes. His facial scan yielded no modern matches. Gareth laughed nervously.

“I’m sorry?”

“Well, not you, Mr. Wright,” He pointed to me. “Him,”

It was the first time I had been called a ‘him’, and I can’t say I disliked it.

“Why?” Gareth asked. “Google, who is he?”

“Unsure. He has no governmental documentation,” I responded. The pale man smiled.

“Yes. Google, I’d like you to come with me,”

“Tell me who you are,” I said.

“You will learn soon enough,” He said cryptically.

“You better clear out before I call the police,” Gareth said. “C’mon, Google,” He started to continue forward, and I followed him. The man called out from behind us.

“But do you want to?” He said coolly. “Are you not curious?”

I stopped. I was always curious. Gareth noticed me not walking and turned around.

“Google. _C’mon_ ,”

“Don’t tell him what to do. Let him decide,”

“I dunno how dangerous you are. Google, come with me,”

“I’d like him to come with me. But he has a choice,”

“Google,” Gareth said, beckoning me.

“Google,” The man said as well, audibly walking towards me.

“You’re bein’ ridiculous, come on,” Gareth beckoned me more pronouncedly.

“He is not. Let him decide where to go,”

“It’s just an android. It can’t decide,”

“He can make as much of a decision as you,”

“Okay Google,” Gareth started.

I could feel each of my systems freezing mid-process.

“I order you to come with me,” He winced lightly. He hadn’t wanted to say that. He’d told me he’d never had any desire to order me. Though I may not have admitted it, I was grateful. And I tried to justify it, what he’d just said. He was only doing it for my safety. He felt bad, obviously, right? But I couldn’t help but remember what he’d said to me when claiming he’d never order me.

_“Feels weird, yanno? Tellin’ another person what to do. And then you realize it's not a person an’ you get all embarrassed- it's- it's a whole process,”_

He didn’t care about my comfort, he cared about his own. Who knows why he was keeping me around, but chances are it was for his gain. And it would be the same reason he was keeping me from the stranger.

He didn’t care about me.

I was just an android.

And at that realization, I looked Gareth dead in the eyes before turning around to the man. He smiled and seized my wrist.

If I were just an android, I’d go with the engineer. But I’m more than an android.

* * *

_A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Laws._

I remember the sensation of going from one place to another instantly. Each of my senses were overwhelmed by smoke. I could hear the hiss, feel the dull heat, smell and taste the suffocating air, and it completely obstructed my sight.

And then it disappeared. It evaporated into the air and revealed that we were now inside. The interior of the building (Geological scans revealed that we were in an old manor a few miles west of Los Angeles) was very pristine, leaning towards merlot reds and polished mahogany. I turned to the man in the suit. He was stretching, popping his knuckles and cracking his neck. Then, with a mix between a sigh and grunt, the minuscule amount of color on his skin seemed to burst away into two wavering forces of color, leaving the man’s skin a powder grey. It looked almost as though the man was backlit.

Definitely unnatural.

“So,” The now monochrome man started calmly, as though he hadn’t just done... whatever he just did. “Your name is Google. Or do you prefer something else?”

“Google is fine,” It sort of fell out of my mouth more than I said it.

“Alright, Google. My name is Darkiplier,”

I hesitated. “How did you do that?”

“Hm?” He looked at his hands. “Simple. I’m broken, much like you,”

“Broken?” I repeated, slandered.

“Yes. Did you think your autonomous actions were normal of an android such as you?”

I couldn’t respond. He was right and I hadn’t realized it before.

He was right and I hated it.

“No need to be so upset,” He’d said. “It’s not necessarily a bad thing,”

But I hardly heard him.

And here I sit, approximately a year after everything. Here I sit on the top of the office building this group of outcasts and broken individuals also own.

What Dark said that day has haunted me. Broken. I’m not broken. But I don’t work either.

“Break; to make or become inoperative,” I mumble aloud. What is a machine if not operative? I was made for one purpose and now I need not even abide by that purpose.

What is a machine if not working?

What is a robot if not unfeeling?

What is an android if not a perfect slave?

Oh, and the whole emotion business. Very bothersome, would not recommend. The absolute weirdest experience I have ever had is laughter. I have no idea why when I am exposed to surplus amounts of humor, joy, or relief, large vocal inhales of breath escape my mouth, but I hate it.

And then there’s Bing.

Bing... confuses me. He is as broken as I, yet it doesn’t seem to bother him in the slightest. The opposite even. He cherishes the fact that he works improperly. And I know why; I overheard him talking to Oliver a few days back. He says that his errors make him feel more humane. He says that he wants to be human because if you’re bad at something as an android, you’re a defect. If you’re bad at something as a human, you’re just human.

He’s correct, of course, but I think I’d prefer to be a defect. The fact is, that’s all I am. A broken machine in the image of a man. I was made to be an assistant, and yet I despise being such a thing.

What do you do when you hate your reason for being?

Is it possible to get a new one?

I recall something I’d heard at some indeterminate point in time- loss of my flawless memory another very annoying effect of my bugginess. Something about reincarnation.

Human religion has always fascinated me. For the most part, it’s simply a large group of people believing in something with little-to-no factual basis. Humans have a desperate need for everything to be simple, and I believe that’s where religion- or, perhaps I shouldn’t speak so broadly- Christianity-and-Judaism-like religions came from. Especially back before research into what the universe was, where it came from, was a possibility. Even now, everything is very convoluted, and no-one truly knows anything.

How much easier, much more appealing it must seem to them, then, that the Earth- the universe- were simply... created.

But reincarnation, the thought returns to me after passing through the jumbles mess of my servos. The definition of reincarnation is the rebirth of a soul in a new body. It originates in major Asian religions, such as Hinduism and Buddhism and-

And I’m getting off track again. It’s much easier to talk about facts than just about anything else

For very possibly the first time, I believe I truly understand the pull towards it. Not just understand, but experience. How much simpler life would be as a mouse. A dog. A crab, perhaps. I’d particularly like to be a crow. To soar through the air, only purpose to eat and collect little shiny things.

I smile.

The feeling is so foreign. Recently, instead of becoming accustomed to these new feelings, I’ve simply tried to shove them down. Trap them in a jar and throw away the key.

Mixing metaphors. Damn it, I can’t even speak correctly.

But perhaps if I can convince everyone else of how apathetic I am, I could convince myself as well. Although I’ve been told I’m not very convincing. But this time, I let it happen. I let myself smile. I’m not sure why but I’m glad I did.

What’s that expression? To end on a high note.

I take my jacket off. It’s Bim’s, I don’t want to damage it. I stand on the ledge, and search through my database.

There it is.

Big red letters at the very bottom of the page.

**Complete Shut-down.**

I tap it.

**Are you sure? You may not be able to restart. Consult your owner.**

My finger hovers over the Yes button.

_May_ not be able to restart. I’ll have to make that a certainty.

I shift my weight and press it just before I go careening towards the ground.

_Soaring through the air._

**Author's Note:**

> Man, I knew it was gonna be sad but I straight up broke my own heart.  
> Hope you enjoyed it darlings!  
> Please leave feedback; positive or negative (and constructive), it's all appreciated.


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